LANDM wrote:They actually had, on some of their residential developments, an option to lease or buy. If someone chose lease, you could buy it out at any time in the future.

Could you please list any of their developments which have/had that option?

From what Doug posted the Guisachan Village Apartments are owned by Victor Properties (Bennett's). BC Assessments lists the units as strata. A previous poster says the unit "owners" pay a "lease" fee in addition to strata fees.??????????????

I think the key word many may have missed is "Apartments" which indicates single ownership of an entire building and rental of individual units rather than "Condos" which usually indicates individual ownership of units within a building.

Very true, except when developers like Mission Group like to market their Urbana condos as "apartments" even though they're for sale. Standards please, development marketers! :(

Individual units are leasehold (i.e., 99-year lease) for the actual building but the owners pay nominal ground lease rent (if not prepaid for 99 years).

Alternatively, they may simply pay strata fees and the Bennetts act as strata manager for the owners. Either way, the fees would be nominal (i.e., several hundred dollars per owner). :)

In the case of Valley First and Chevron, do they "own" their own leasehold units for the 99 years or whatever or do they sublease them from some other owner, which might be the Bennetts?

If they actually have an "ownership" interest, that may change my prediction on a possible closure of Valley First's Guisachan Village branch. The site is rather large and they are relentless at closing branches or downsizing them to cut costs and I wonder if they might be keen to move to smaller premises in Mission Park Shopping Centre instead?

LANDM wrote:They actually had, on some of their residential developments, an option to lease or buy. If someone chose lease, you could buy it out at any time in the future.

Could you please list any of their developments which have/had that option?

From what Doug posted the Guisachan Village Apartments are owned by Victor Properties (Bennett's). BC Assessments lists the units as strata. A previous poster says the unit "owners" pay a "lease" fee in addition to strata fees.??????????????

forumdoug wrote:If what has been said is true, what I think may be is this:

Individual units are leasehold (i.e., 99-year lease) for the actual building but the owners pay nominal ground lease rent (if not prepaid for 99 years).

Alternatively, they may simply pay strata fees and the Bennetts act as strata manager for the owners. Either way, the fees would be nominal (i.e., several hundred dollars per owner). :)

In the case of Valley First and Chevron, do they "own" their own leasehold units for the 99 years or whatever or do they sublease them from some other owner, which might be the Bennetts?

If they actually have an "ownership" interest, that may change my prediction on a possible closure of Valley First's Guisachan Village branch. The site is rather large and they are relentless at closing branches or downsizing them to cut costs and I wonder if they might be keen to move to smaller premises in Mission Park Shopping Centre instead?

Cheers,Doug

You are using terms a bit casually so it clouds your explanation/thoughts. You can own a lease but you do not own the underlying property. You can have subleases also, but it doesn’t change any underlying structure. I do not, of course, have any idea how the VF and Chevron arrangements are structured in this situation, but they would likely be no different than they do elsewhere when they set up somewhere.....and those situations are generally different, between the two of them.

From Land Title and Survey Authority re: 2355 Gordon Dr, Kelowna, BC (many tenants, including Canada Post, use the address 2365 Gordon Dr but that is not registered as a civic address with the LTSA so I suspect maybe Canada Post has assigned 2365 Gordon Dr to represent the collective property, being the two parcels)

Name(s) on title aren't included with free access to LTSA but hopefully this helps.

PARCEL IDENTIFIER (PID): 017-534-925

SHORT LEGAL DESCRIPTION:S/KAP46155/////B MARG:*TAXATION AUTHORITY: 1 Kelowna, City of

ASSOCIATED PLAN NUMBERS: SUBDIVISION PLAN KAP46155 STATUTORY RIGHT OF WAY PLAN KAP48618 PLAN KAP53951 LEASE OF PART OF BUILDING PLAN EPP53546

AFB/IFB: MN: Y PE: 0 SL: 1 TI: 1

If you look up those "SRW PLAN" numbers and try and search those documents, they show up as "statutory right-of-way plans," subject to fees. If they were a strata plan, it'd be free as myLTSA provides free access to strata plans. :)

Compare the above to the strata property at 140 Commercial Drive, Kelowna, BC:

SHORT LEGAL DESCRIPTION:S/KAS1822/////1 MARG:TAXATION AUTHORITY: 1 Kelowna, City of

FULL LEGAL DESCRIPTION: CURRENT STRATA LOT 1 SECTION 35 TOWNSHIP 26 OSOYOOS DIVISION YALE DISTRICT STRATA PLAN KAS1822 TOGETHER WITH AN INTEREST IN THE COMMON PROPERTY IN PROPORTION TO THE UNIT ENTITLEMENT OF THE STRATA LOT AS SHOWN ON FORM 1

It may still be a "ground lease" to some other owner, like the Bennetts did with RCSS but in that case RCSS prepaid the lease for the entire 90+ years so that, effectively, it amounts to "leasehold ownership". The Bennetts actually had to buy back that portion of the prepaid lease from the holder, Loblaw Properties West Inc., a few years ago to develop the Baron Centre strip mall as RCSS held that extra land for possible expansion.

So, the Bennetts may well own this property but lease it collectively to someone else, who then effectively subleases each of the units to various tenants, but it might be a prepaid lease. The Bennetts may not receive any monthly fees from it.:)

The Bennetts may well also retain ownership of the property entirely, leasing the units to various tenants directly, as I still suspect is the case. :)